The author(s) shown below used Federal funding provided by the U.S. Department of Justice to prepare the following resource: Document Title: Assessing the Role of School Discipline in Disproportionate Minority Contact with the Juvenile Justice System: Final Technical Report Author(s): Miner P. Marchbanks III, Jamilia J. Blake Document Number: 252059 Date Received: August 2018 Award Number: 2012-JF-FX-4064 This resource has not been published by the U.S. Department of Justice. This resource is being made publically available through the Office of Justice Programs’ National Criminal Justice Reference Service. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. Assessing the Role of School Discipline in Disproportionate Minority Contact with the Juvenile Justice System: Final Technical Report Miner P. Marchbanks III Jamilia J. Blake Texas A&M University Report prepared for Grant #2012-JF-FX-4064 awarded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of Justice. This resource was prepared by the author(s) using Federal funds provided by the U.S. Department of Justice. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS............................................................................................................ 3 ABSTRACT.................................................................................................................................... 4 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ............................................................................................................ 5 OVERVIEW OF THE PROBLEM ................................................................................................ 7 STUDY METHODS....................................................................................................................... 9 FINDINGS.................................................................................................................................... 12 Analysis 1: Predicting the Effect of Strict Campus Discipline Policies ................................... 12 Analysis 2: Predicting School Discipline Contact .................................................................... 24 Analysis 3: Predicting the Severity of School Punishment. ..................................................... 31 Analysis 4: Predicting the Effect School Discipline on Individual Educational Outcomes ..... 36 Analysis 5: Predicting Juvenile Justice Contact ....................................................................... 41 THE STUDY LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS ................................................... 51 IMPLICATION FOR POLICY AND PRACTICE ...................................................................... 55 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................. 56 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................. 58 ABSTRACTS ............................................................................................................................... 66 Assessing the Role of School Discipline in Disproportionate Minority Contact with the Juvenile Justice 2 System: Final Technical Report This resource was prepared by the author(s) using Federal funds provided by the U.S. Department of Justice. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This report is the product of collaboration among the Public Policy Research Institute at Texas A&M University and the Department of Education Psychology at Texas A&M University. Special appreciation is given to the Department of Sociology at Texas A&M University, and the Department of Sociology at Virginia Tech University. Miner Marchbanks was the principal investigator for this project and Jamilia J. Blake was a co-principal investigator. The research presented here utilizes confidential data from the State of Texas supplied by the Texas Education Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin. The authors gratefully acknowledge the use of these data. Special thanks also goes to Celeste Alexander, Nancy Arigona, Eric A. Booth, Dottie Carmichael, John M. Eason, Tony Fabelo, Pernilla Johansson, Barbara Tatem Kelley, Eun Sook Kim, Anthony Peguero, Allison Seibert, Danielle M. Smith, Jacqueline Stillisano, Kay Varela, and Steve Wood. This project was supported by Grant # (2012-JF-FX-4064) awarded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, views and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Texas ERC or any of the funders or supporting organizations mentioned herein, including The University of Texas, the State of Texas, the OJJDP, or the Department of Justice. Any errors are attributable to the authors. Recommended Citation: Marchbanks, Miner P., and Jamilia J. Blake (2017). Assessing Authoritative School Strictness by Race: Final Report. College Station, TX: Public Policy Research Institute, Texas A&M University. Assessing the Role of School Discipline in Disproportionate Minority Contact with the Juvenile Justice 3 System: Final Technical Report This resource was prepared by the author(s) using Federal funds provided by the U.S. Department of Justice. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. ABSTRACT The purpose of this project was to assess the predictors of school discipline contact and the consequences of this contact on educational and juvenile justice outcomes of racially and ethnically diverse students. Further, this project examines the predictors of moving through the various stages of juvenile justice system. Last, the analyses look at the relationship between school strictness and various outcomes of great importance including school achievement and juvenile justice contact. Across analyses, the impact of race was considered. The research conducted here is a more complex and in-depth continuation of an investigation began by the Public Policy Research Institute (PPRI) at Texas A&M University (TAMU). PPRI subsequently received funding under the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s (OJJDP) 2012 Field Initiated Research and Evaluation Program to more closely examine the school discipline policies and the juvenile justice process across ethnic minority groups. A series of studies using a variety of advance statistical methods establish strong evidence of racial bias in school discipline contact, severity of punishment, poor educational outcomes, and justice system referrals across various types of schools and communities. We utilize quantitative methods ranging from structural equation models, an ordered probit with Heckman selection, clustered standard errors, to generalized linear models to highlight findings consistent with the “school-to-prison pipeline” model. The key measures of racial composition of school, teacher diversity, student–teacher racial/ethnic incongruence, and proportion of students receiving free or reduced lunch, were used as controls to investigate the prevalence of harsh discipline, poor educational outcomes, and justice system referrals across harsh/lenient schools and rural-urban communities. This report summarizes key findings from 14 manuscripts, including articles/book chapters. Many are published or in the process of being published in refereed journals. Dependent variables are at the case, student and school level. At the student level, these include encountering the school disciplinary system, juvenile justice referrals, standardized test failure and severity of punishment. At the school/campus level, outcomes include grade retention rate, dropout rate, and juvenile justice referral rate. In measuring cases where students enter the juvenile justice system, we use three dependent variables including referral to prosecutor, prosecutorial action, and case outcome. The results of this study will help advance the field on a theoretically grounded and statistically rigorous model for understanding school the racial lines of the “school-to-prison pipeline”. Assessing the Role of School Discipline in Disproportionate Minority Contact with the Juvenile Justice 4 System: Final Technical Report This resource was prepared by the author(s) using Federal funds provided by the U.S. Department of Justice. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The project explores the predictors of school discipline contact and the resulting consequences of encountering this discipline. The project then moves to an examination of the determinants of progressing through the various decision points in a juvenile